Tuesday, 5 October 2010

Now that was fun... again.

In October last year, when my new Mango was two days old, I raced it in Groningen. This Sunday was the time for the same race again, a few days earlier in October than last year.

I think there's some significance in that the lighter velomobiles did particularly well. In the timed lap, for instance, Ymte Sijbrandij and Hans Wessels took first and second place by both riding Ymte's 25 kg custom made light Quest. Harry was in third place in his (standard) Mango Sport (26 kg), Stefan van Duijvenboden was fourth in his old 20" rear wheel Quest (the internals are like a Mango with an intermediate drive, and these older Quests weighed around 32 kg), and Peter Haan was fifth in his 29 kg Mango Sport RE. In the overall rating, Harry Lieben came third in his Mango Sport. That's the highest result in the race for a standard machine that anyone can buy right now.

Of course, these are all also very strong riders.

A few of my photos can be seen below, including one of the car that someone had inconsiderately left parked part on the track for us to swerve around... (I rarely have complaints, but this was really not a clever thing to do)

Dave, thanks for sharing. It looked like fun. Not too many participants though (seemed so).I tried to view the webpage with the results, but it didn't show much. When you show videos of you riding Mango, can you also post the speed at which you're going from time to time? Sometimes you mention the average, but that's not the same. It would be nice to correlate the passing landscape with the actual speed. I find your website inspiring. Doesn't get the velomobile too hot inside?

For me, the average speed in race was 40.8 km/h. The course has a very slight hill in it, which co-incided with a headwind, so the back straight which has a hedge along the side was the slowest bit, a couple of km/h slower, and the start line is the fastest bit, a couple of km/h faster.

Just after the start line (and the car) is the only corner which is slightly tight and requires a bit of care.

It was 30 km to the track from Assen. We had a great tailwind and rode mostly pretty close to 40 km/h. On the return journey we were a bit tired and had a headwind so rode at around 30 km/h.

No, the Mango doesn't really get hot inside. I've ridden it when the temperature is as high as 37 C and it's been no problem at all. However, it also doesn't really get cold in the winter. You can close the top then which stops the airflow and keeps you warm. Some people use the top in summer as well, but if I use it when it's warm I do then get too hot.

@Surly Dave and Jon Bendtsen: We were afraid to pull off the wheelarches that were made of plastic....

@ David: you can see very nicely how easy I close the gap between Alwin in his orange Quest and me after the tightest corner and even overtake him. I did so for 11 rounds in exactly the same way until another rider got in the way and I had to let Alwin go for a while.I have two advantages in that particular corner: a higher cornering speed and easier acceleration because of my low weight. It took Alwin half the track every time again to pass me in turn. He was pretty beaten after the race but he did manage to be 2 seconds faster than me. It was just because I thought we had another lap to go so I would have time to outsprint him :-(Next week the last race of the season!

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